Road Trip 2011 – Forks, WA & Olympic National Park – Day 54

We woke up from the Falls View Campground near Quilcene, WA and as we were pulling out my car started chugging. Oh no… what’s going on with my car??? Finally it picked up speed and stopped the chugging and pulling so we kept on going. But everytime I had to slow down below 40mph or stop and start again, the chugging started again. But still, once I work the gas a bit to get the gears to change, the chugging stopped. So, we decide to keep trucking through to see the park. Most of the Olympic National Park is wilderness like North Cascades Park was. So, unless we wanted to spend a day hiking there wasn’t much to see. We did stop by the Sol Duc hot springs, but once again we were disappointed by what a swimming “hot spring” looks like. It was just like a big swimming pool area. So, we skipped out on soaking and made it to Forks before 5 to get my car checked out.

They ran a computer test on the Element to see what was wrong, but other than that, they weren’t very helpful or nice here at the auto shop in Forks. They did offer their parking lot for us to have a place to sleep if we decided to stay until the next day to see if we could order the part, but because they weren’t very reassuring or kind or confident sounding we decided to risk it and keep on going.

But of course we had to stop by the Twilight central shop first!

Then we stopped at Ruby Beach…

Our feet’s first experience with the Pacific Ocean!

I was freezing, but then two crazy kids came running from the woods in their bathing suits ready to jump in. Crazy I say!

Then we stopped at Beach 4, which our National Park book said was a good stop for seeing tide pools and sometimes Otters. It was a bit of a hike down and getting late… plus we had missed the tides… so we just climbed to the cliff viewing point instead. I lost interest after a few minutes and went back to the car to snack on some celery. After I had eaten half a bag, Ben came running out from the path and told me to get my camera, that there was an otter in the water! Turns out, that otter was a seal…

But then… 2 otters did come skipping down the beach!

Right as we were about to leave, we looked up and watched a bald eagle fly right over our heads and circle around a few times! It was beautiful. Unfortunately I had used up all my memory card with the seal and otters and I didn’t have time to delete any before the eagle disappeared.

Between Beach 1 and Beach 2 we found South Beach Campground, right on the water. It was a nice change from the wilderness camping we’ve done so much of so far.

We’ve been trying to cook a little healthier lately too. I picked up some rainbow chard from the farmers market in Seattle… it was so delicious!